Trump Signs FY2020 Appropriations Into Law

Late this evening, President Trump signed the FY2020 appropriations bills into law, averting a government shutdown and funding DOD, NASA, NOAA and other government agencies in the discretionary portion of the federal budget through September 30, 2020.

The 12 appropriations bills are bundled into two “minibuses”:

H.R. 1158, Consolidated Appropriations Act

• Defense
• Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS, including NASA and NOAA)
• Financial Services and General Government
• Homeland Security

H.R. 1865, Further Consolidated Appropriations Act

• Labor-Health and Human Services
• Agriculture
• Energy and Water
• Interior-Environment
• Legislative Branch
• Military Construction-Veterans Affairs
• State-Foreign Operations
• Transportation-Housing and Urban Development (THUD)

Trump signed both.  He also signed the FY2020 National Defense Autorization Act (NDAA) which, among other things, creates a U.S. Space Force as part of the Air Force.

• The NDAA authorizes creation of a sixth military service, Space Force, as part of the Air Force.  The Defense Appropriations bill funds it at $40 million, compared to the $72.4 million requested.
• The CJS bill gives NASA $22.6 billion, almost exactly the same as the request, but provides only lukewarm support for the new Artemis program to return humans to the Moon by 2024.  Less than half the requested funding for human landing systems (HLS) was approved even though they are a sine qua non for achieving that goal.
• The CJS bill not only funds NOAA’s satellite programs, but the Office of Space Commerce and the Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs office.  It does not approve the Administration’s request to merge those two offices and move them to the office of the Secretary of Commerce as the nucleus of a new Bureau of Space Commerce. Instead, the bill requires an independent study of the merits of the proposal.
• The THUD bill funds commercial space activities at the FAA, providing slightly more than requested for the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, but less than requested for development of a Commercial Space Integrator (or Space Data Integrator) to shorten the time airspace must be closed during launches and reentries, and an associated Center of Excellence.
• The THUD bill also has two NASA provisions.  One extends a waiver to the Iran-North Korea-Syria Nonproliferation Act (INKSNA) allowing NASA to purchase space station-related services from Russia through December 31, 2025.  The other extends NASA’s authority to enter into Enhanced Use Leasing agreements through December 31, 2021.